Global Ethernet Switch Market hits $5.1 Billion in 1Q12

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Networks Tracker reported that for the first quarter of 2012 the global Ethernet switch market hit $5.1 billion in revenue, a 7.4 percent gain on a year over year (YOY) basis. In contrast, the global router market only grew by 2.8 percent.

One of the bright spots for the switch market is the continued growth of 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE). According to IDC, 10GbE is now the driver of overall switch market growth. In the first quarter, 2.8 million 10GbE ports were shipped and revenue increased by 20.6 percent YOY.

While there is no shortage of vendors plying their wares in the switch market, Cisco continues to dominate the space overall with a 65.1 percent market share. Cisco's first quarter 2012, Ethernet switch share is a marginal gain of 2.1 percent from the 63 percent reported for 2011. Cisco's share of the fast growing 10GbE segment is even more impressive, coming in at 69.4 percent for the first quarter of 2012.

"The positive market performance in the first quarter of 2012 speaks well to the network infrastructure needs of enterprise IT as it embraces cloud technologies," said Rohit Mehra, director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC, in a statement. "While Gigabit Ethernet is alive and well at the network edge supporting a myriad of applications, it is 10GbE along with the emerging 40GbE that will continue to drive incremental growth in datacenter and campus core deployments."

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